Monsters
by MissAppropriation
Summary: After Last of the Time Lords, the Doctor tries to come to terms with where his choices have led him. Some dark themes because 10 is in a very bad place here, but this is a Canon-compliant level of angst. Characters: 10th Doctor, Martha, the Master (mentioned).


This fic was my attempt to get a better grip on 10 as a character since I really struggle with seeing his perspective during SoD/LotTL. It came out pretty good, so I'm posting it! This is **not** a happy fic, although it is by no means hopeless.

References my Time War Team series but it will still make sense if you haven't read those. It actually references _Gargoyles (1994)_ much more strongly. Look it up. (You're welcome!)

I'll post something short and happy to make up for this. ;)

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**Monsters**

The Doctor walked slowly back to his TARDIS, hands in his pockets, long coat blowing in the bitter wind, the smell of smoke clinging in his nostrils.

His eyes were dry as he left the body of his best friend in the flames behind him.

He could have stayed... But he couldn't bear to watch any more of his life burning.

So he lit the pyre and walked away. And he didn't look back.

The TARDIS felt colder than usual, withdrawn.

She'd been through a lot in the Year That Never Was. The Master had turned her into a Paradox Machine. Torment for a living TARDIS. As he well knew.

The humans of Earth hadn't known anything beyond their own suffering. But the Doctor and the Master could both hear the TARDIS screaming.

It was a truly monstrous act. As were many of the atrocities the Master had committed during the Year.

And the Doctor, tapping into the Archangel psychic network had heard the despair, the fear, the screams of pain as the Master murdered Earth piece by piece.

The Master kept talking, all the time. As if his voice mattered more than all the voices crying out from the world he was destroying.

The Doctor had planned to listen to humanity, to acknowledge their pain while he waited for the countdown, for his chance to reverse everything.

But he couldn't bear it. It was too much.

Far, _far _too much...

All he could think of was Gallifrey.

Fighting.

Dying.

_Burning. _

He blocked out the voices.

He blocked out the TARDIS, too.

Now the TARDIS was back to herself. As soon as the Paradox Machine had been disabled she had set to work repairing the damage the Master had done.

It hadn't taken her long.

The Doctor had claimed the Master's body. UNIT had tried to take it.

But he wasn't theirs to take.

The Doctor shut himself away in a room on the Valiant and prepared the Master's body for burial.

He couldn't comprehend that his friend was dead.

They'd known each other for so long... The Doctor could scarcely remember a time before they'd met.

Even when the Master had left the War, even after Gallifrey had burned, he'd never truly believed the Master was dead.

He had looked for him. Off and on, throughout the years, he had tried to find his friend.

He hadn't ever talked about him or said where he was going. He'd just... Disappear. He had a time machine. He could be back seconds after he had left. Or even before he left, if need be. Not that that would be smart.

Rose had never asked where he went on his own. Maybe she didn't really want to know.

Strange that after all that searching, he'd ended up running into the Master by accident.

And he hadn't expected what he had found. Not just a human at the end of his brief lifespan, but a very different Master from the one he had last seen.

He was angry, manic, uncontrolled, bent on revenge. He'd lost his mind.

And still, he was so dangerous. Still, he had to be stopped.

Still, he was the boy the Doctor had grown up with.

Still, he was the child he had taken care of, fought side by side with in the Time War.

The Doctor didn't know what to do about all of that.

So he did... Nothing.

The Master hadn't ever made a lot of sense, even before the War. He'd never had a place where he fit, never been easy to explain. Now, in this new Universe, this Universe which needed a new kind of Doctor... Now, what role did the Master fill?

The Master hadn't known. So he'd done what he'd always been so good at: _killing _.

The Doctor hadn't known either. Because it was his job to save the victims, to punish the victimizers.

But which was the Master? Victim or victimizer?

He'd played both roles, many times. Sometimes without his knowledge.

During the Time War, he'd often been both at the exact same time.

And the man the Doctor had been then had somehow dealt with that contradiction, daily.

But the Doctor wasn't that man anymore, could never be that man again. Even if he had wanted to be.

The past held no answers. He only had the future. He could only move forward.

The Master had tried to drag him backwards. Back into the Time War. Back into the times when everything had been so _complicated _.

But really, things were so much simpler than the Master had always made them seem.

The Master had murdered billions of people. Did he truly think that just because they had been friends, even perhaps still _were _friends, that somehow made his actions excusable?

All the pain and horror the Doctor had witnessed... And all the Master could do was add to it.

That wasn't how friends treated each other.

So it seemed he had to be treated as an enemy... Until he he relented or until someone stopped him.

And of course, he hadn't stopped, hadn't even slowed down. Killing and pillaging and destroying like he was racing against a clock. Like his life depended on it.

And the Doctor had waited.

Because in the end, the Master would see: there was no way to win. His Year of slaughter and horror could and would be reversed. He'd have nothing.

And then he'd _have _to give up. He'd _have _to understand.

He'd _have _to listen.

But, no. The Master had flipped the script, as he so often did. Ending the story in the worst way possible.

And the Doctor had felt regret like he'd never felt in all of his lives.

Alone, he'd wrapped the Master's body, meticulously.

Alone, he'd taken the TARDIS to a forest and gathered lumber.

Alone, he'd constructed a pyre for his oldest friend. Log by log. Carefully, as the Master would have done for him if the roles had been reversed.

He built it tall. The Master would have wanted that.

When he was finished, his hands were cut and bleeding. Scraped by rough bark, splinters embedded in his palms.

It didn't matter. He would heal.

On the outside, anyway.

Skin was easy to repair.

Now, he stood in the TARDIS.

Thinking about Martha and her family. Of all he had put them through. Wondering how he could face them again.

They wouldn't blame him though, right? It had all been the Master's doing. They would see that.

Maybe it was better this way, with the Master dead.

The Universe would certainly be a safer place...

Although perhaps less interesting.

And certainly much lonelier.

But that was how the Master thought. That if the choice was between the Earth and himself, the Doctor would have to choose _him _.

And after Earth, he would have moved on to the rest of the Universe, going bigger and bigger in an attempt to prove how important he was.

Yes. It was better this way. As heartbroken as the Doctor was and always would be... This is how it had to be.

It was for the best.

The Universe had been spared a great wrong and the Doctor would have to focus on that.

Something whirred in the TARDIS Console and an image appeared on the screen.

A cartoon. One the Doctor knew well.

A woman, young, dark-haired, wearing blue jeans and a red jacket.

The Doctor frowned for a moment, reminded of Martha. He'd never made the connection.

_"What happened to the monster?" _she asked.

A large, gray humanoid creature appeared, wings and hair dripping wet. _"He wasn't a monster," _he said. _"He was family. And now he's gone." _

The Doctor's eyes went wide and he punched a button to eject the video cassette.

"Stop it!" he muttered angrily to the timeship.

The TARDIS hummed at him, lights blinking. Sometimes, it was almost as if she was trying to speak.

The Doctor leaned against the Console, wishing that she could.

He was so tired of having both sides of every conversation himself.

He was so tired of making all the decisions, of having to choose who lived and who died.

He wanted a break. He just wanted to be himself again, to look out at the stars and remember that _wonder _.

But all those stars had burned, during the War. All of reality. Reclaiming that had been a nearly-impossible chore.

When he looked at the stars now, he could still see them burning.

When he looked at his old friends, he saw all the times they had died, all the dead-end realities he had fought to unmake.

He _had _to move forward.

There was only horror behind. Always chasing, always gaining.

He had to _run_.

But he looked at the video tape in his hand, reading the detailed Gallifreyan handwriting on the front:

_Gargoyles:  
Season 1, Episodes 7-13 _

The Doctor felt a smile tugging at his mouth despite himself, remembering how much the Master had enjoyed his cartoons.

The Doctor still had entire boxes of video cassettes stored in the TARDIS, each painstakingly labeled in Gallifreyan.

The Master had watched anything and everything, devouring children's television with an insatiable appetite.

But _Gargoyles _had been his favorite.

The Doctor had seen it, too. He hadn't been given much of a choice. The Master had begged and badgered and pestered until his friend had agreed to watch it with him.

And it was _good_.

Complicated. Not what he had expected. Layers of meaning and complexity hidden under the guise of a children's show.

Strangely and perfectly appropriate for where the Master had been at that point in his life.

The Doctor remembered watching it together, remembered wondering what the Master saw when he watched it. What he made of the morality, of the themes of redemption and personal accountability.

There was no way to tell, really.

It had always been that way with them... They'd look at the same thing but would see something completely different.

They'd spent countless hours over the centuries trying to explain their own viewpoints to each other. Always unsuccessfully. But somehow they couldn't stop.

Suddenly, the Doctor missed that: his inability to make the Master see his side of the story. Having to explain. Having to _fight _. Having to agree to disagree, in the end. Because it was always the way with them, always they'd end with a draw. Only to take up the argument again, inevitably, endlessly.

It was so _easy _now... So easy to make everyone else see his viewpoint.

They all saw what he wanted them to see. A certainty, a conviction, an answer.

It was all a lie.

The Doctor had no answers.

But they believed and he took that lie they believed and tried to make it a reality.

Because there really was no truth anymore.

He denied the Time War, denied the man he had been, the man who had fought and killed and made complicated decisions every day without even blinking.

The man who was totally at peace with being best friends with a mass murderer.

The man who had _become _a mass murderer.

Because that was the truth of it, wasn't it?

They had always been different, the Doctor and the Master.

But not anymore.

Because the Doctor had _won_.

He'd killed more than the Master ever had.

He wasn't really the Doctor anymore... As much as he might like to be. He would give anything to go back to that time, to rewind the War as he had the Year, to know what it meant to be the Doctor again.

He could barely remember what that had meant, to not have killed so many to save so many more. That's not something the Doctor had ever done.

Being _the Doctor _was an ideal he couldn't reach anymore, no matter how he might try.

But people looked at him and still saw that ideal. That kept him going: that facade, that thin veneer of heroism.

And always, the fear was there... Because if they just scratched the surface they'd see the hypocrisy, the reality.

That he was the real monster.

That maybe they'd shot the wrong Time Lord.

The Master was broken. He'd always been broken, in a way. They'd both learned to live with that.

But the Doctor... He'd been something different once. He'd been a good person, once upon a time. Back in the days when the Universe had had room for good people.

Now, being the Doctor had to mean something different. Because the Doctor would never have done what the Doctor remembered doing.

What he saw every time he closed his eyes.

_The Doctor _would not have burned Gallifrey.

_The Doctor _would have found another way.

And that was something the Master could never understand. Having done something that terrible out of necessity. With no joy, no sense of victory, only shame and regret.

There had always been that divide between them, that line they danced across every now and then, just a little, just to see what it looked like on the other side.

That divide had been obliterated with the destruction of Gallifrey.

They were the same now.

The Doctor and the Master... Killers of billions.

_Monsters. _

And, counterintuitively, that made the Master the last person the Doctor could talk to about what he had done.

Because although the Master knew what it was like to kill a billion people in the blink of an eye, he could never understand how it felt to want to _take it back _.

He'd tell the Doctor it was _right_, that it had to be done. That he was a hero.

It was the last thing he wanted to hear.

It was the only thing he wanted to hear.

But the Master was gone.

That acceptance that the Doctor both dreaded and yearned for was now impossible.

He'd missed his chance.

The Doctor couldn't bear being alone with his thoughts. They were loud and judgmental and they never, ever stopped.

But he couldn't face Martha again, not yet. The worship in her eyes when she looked at him was like an opiate.

He didn't want a drug. He didn't want to dull the pain only to have it return again, so quickly and always so much worse than before.

The Doctor pulled out the boxes of the Master's videotapes. He dug through until he found the one labeled:

_Gargoyles:  
Season 1, Episodes 1-6 _

He started watching.

When he finished that tape, he put the next one in and continued.

Then he found the rest.

He sat alone in the TARDIS and watched the entire series.

He thought about the man he had been, about the boy the Master had been.

He thought about not being alone and about the Time War and about decisions he would happily die to take back, if only he could.

He thought about stories and endings and unexpected twists of fate.

Tragedy and joy and comedy and family...

_Life. _

Life that went on whether you were ready for it or not.

Maybe he had been working too hard.

In the old days, the things he had done, the people he had saved... It hadn't been a _job _. He had just... _Done _it.

How had that worked again?

He couldn't remember.

But it wasn't the first time in his lives that he had had to figure out what _Being the Doctor _meant.

After he'd left Gallifrey, so, so long ago... He'd had to start over. He'd had no direction, no hope of finding one.

But somehow, the answers had found him.

There was no way to recreate those days, those people.

But maybe, if he went far enough back, if he started from scratch again, things would work themselves out.

That's generally how things had gone, in the old days.

One thing he knew for sure: he'd never used to take things so seriously when he was younger. He'd never felt he _needed _to. He'd been free to wander about as he pleased, getting into trouble and getting out of it. Meeting new friends, making new enemies. Discovering a Universe which was full of fresh wonders around every corner, just begging to be shared.

The Doctor finished the last episode of Season 2. He put the videotapes in their boxes, hiding them out of sight once again.

He patched up the cuts on his hands.

He went back to Martha.

He arrived about twenty seconds after he'd left her. She was standing there in her red jacket waiting patiently. Trustingly.

The weight settled on his hearts again as he remembered what he'd done to her.

He tried to shake it off as Martha entered the TARDIS gingerly. Like he was a skittish animal she was afraid of startling if she moved too close, too quickly.

"What happened to the Master?" she asked.

The Doctor looked at her, frozen for a moment as he remembered the clip the TARDIS had played.

"Gone," he said finally, eyes falling.

"So, he really is dead then?" Her tone was so gentle.

"You saw, he died. He didn't regenerate." He poked at the controls, entering coordinates.

"Yeah, but..." Martha started.

The Doctor thought she might stop. He didn't want to talk about this and he was certainly giving her no encouragement to continue.

But she kept going.

Martha had grown up a lot.

"You've thought he was dead before..." she pointed out. "Right?"

The Doctor glanced up, startled, frowning. "How do you know that?"

Martha gave him a look. Kind, but different than how she used to look at him. "Spent a year fighting the Master, remember? Telling stories? Hard to do that without hearing a few stories along the way."

The Doctor found himself staring at Martha.

_How much did she know...? _

Martha broke the silence. "So, you _really _think he's dead this time?"

The Doctor thought about it. He _had _been sure but... He'd been sure before.

Maybe it was all those times the Master had beaten the odds or maybe it was just denial. Either way... It _was _kind of hard to believe.

He shrugged.

He wasn't sure how to feel about that.

"Well, tell you what," Martha said, moving closer to the Console. "Next time he turns up just... Keep him away from my family. Because I am _not _doing that again."

The Doctor glanced at her, guiltily. But she wasn't angry. Her tone wasn't accusing. She was simply setting the expectation.

She smiled and her eyes were sad. "Next time, it's _your _turn to save the world from the Master. Deal?"

The Doctor thought about the other times the Master had tried to take over the world. How he had stopped him. How they had both somehow had fun doing that.

Not at all like the Year that they had just been through.

Maybe next time, they could get it right.

That didn't sound so bad.

The Doctor twitched a smile in Martha's direction. "Yeah... Deal."

_The_ _End_

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\- Gargoyles episode was S01E13: "Reawakening".

\- Fic title is taken from another Gargoyles episode, which was all about family.

\- In Idiot's Lantern, the Doctor used a betamax tape labeled in Gallifreyan. In case you needed a Canon image to go with this fic. :)

Thanks for reading! :) :)


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